WebJanFeb18

www.westendermagazine.com | 19
Writer’s Reveal
meets Alan Taylor
WORDS LORAINE PATRICK
What turns a journalist from Edinburgh into a self professed
Glasgowphile and compile stories and anecdotes about our
great city into a book? Intrigued, Loraine Patrick ventured into
the Merchant City to find out more.
Ilove Glasgow. It’s been my home for the
last 20 years. I couldn’t imagine living
anywhere else. It’s a city that has lived
through many reputations – the gang ridden,
hard drinking ‘No Mean City’, the cultural
renaissance when it became ‘Miles Better’
and nowadays ‘People Make Glasgow’. But
do these slogans tell the whole story? Writer
and commentator Alan Taylor doesn’t think
so and in a new book on the dear green place
he tells the city’s story through the eyes of
those who have lived it.
There were two reasons why the book came
into being Alan explains, ‘I always felt that
Glasgow was underrated and undersold,
often by its own people but also it’s a city
that is under appreciated by the rest of the
country. Secondly I felt it was misrepresented
– too many people think it is a dirty grimy
working class city.’
Originally from Edinburgh, Alan spent much
of his career as a journalist, columnist and
editor working at newspaper offices in the
Merchant City. ‘I used to walk from Queen
Street station to Albion Street and I felt like
I was in Chicago. The Merchant City was an
amazing place – it hadn’t been prettified as
it is now. It had a real edge to it and had that
tart Glasgow humour which I loved. You just
couldn’t put a book like this together on any
other city. Underpinning everything about
Glasgow is a sense of humour. Edinburgh is
boring by comparison,’ he says wryly.
One of the more humorous anecdotes in the
book comes from 1950s matinee idol Dirk
Bogarde who was sent up to Glasgow to live
with an aunt and go to school here. ‘This was
in the thirties,’ Alan continues, ‘and he had a
horrendous time here. Here was an English
schoolboy with a very posh accent who was
also (unbeknown to him at the time) gay. He
regularly skipped school because he was
given such a hard time and would go to the
cinema. The episode in the book describes
him being picked up by an older man – a
medical student – and what happens when
he is invited back to his flat. ’
Such stories from people you don’t expect
to have an association with the city give
the book a different perspective. ‘It’s a real
patchwork story told by a diverse range
of people. Every class, every race, from
artist to criminal – the whole gamut has
been included,’ Alan says. ‘There is nothing
wrong with working class Glasgow or
militant Glasgow or industrial Glasgow –
that’s all part of the story, but it is not the
whole story.’